I bet they're just lazy. They should just buy less machiatos and avocados. They could fix their economy if they bought this new cheap and fantastic product called "Gruel". You can also get the lunch variety, "Scop". Only available through company credits.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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As a guy who almost exclusively "eats" Soylent, I feel targeted lol. I know your post is supposed to be dystopian satire, but... Unironically though, I'm the healthiest I've ever been (375lbs -> 225lbs), and my monthly food expenses are less than a quarter of what it used to be. Been doing this almost 8 years now and while I recognize it's not for everyone, some people could use a little gruel.
The problem is it should be optional. A family of 4, a single parent, or a college grad working 60hrs a week shouldn't only be able to afford gruel.
If you watch old educational and industrial movies from the 1950s (yes, some of us here on Lemmy are, amazingly, weird), you find out that people living on a single income of a father working at a service station could afford a house and a decent dinner for their family.
That may not be 100% accurate, but the fact that they even show it as plausible would be seen as utter nonsense today.
Even going back to the 1980s- Both Roseanne and Dan in Roseanne have trouble holding down a job, but they can still afford a house for their large family and they don't go hungry. Even on Married With Children, they are poor, but they have a house for their four-person family and don't go hungry on a single shoe salesman's salary and no one thought, "how ridiculous! A shoe salesman? With a house?" at the time.
You do have to factor in race, that a lot of what you see on tv was idealised even at the time, and that we now also have unimaginable luxuries that we take for granted. Proper insulation, phones, computers, unlimited music, etc.
In 1950 you could buy a median US house for $20k. A fridge/freezer cost $400, a tv cost $300 and a washer and dryer would cost $500.
Now a median house costs $400k. If the cost of household appliances and electronics had risen as much as houses had, a freezer would cost $8000, a tv would cost $6000 and a washer + dryer would set you back $10000.
I dont know a single person who wouldn't be happy to buy a 8k freezer, a 6k tv and a 10k washer+dryer if it meant they could buy a 20k house.
The appliances were adjusted for inflation, but not the house. $20k in 1950 is $250k today. Median home price in the US is $450k today. So your point still stands, I think.
Average wage in 1950 was something like 5k. So that 20k house is four years wage.
Average wage now is over 50k. Would you be happy to buy a house for four years wage at 200k? Of course you would.
But would you be happy to buy a typical 1950s house with lead pipes, lead paint, asbestos insulation, no central heating and perhaps not even warm water? Questionable. It's the same thing as with cars. 1950s cars were far more affordable. They were also death traps and a recent diesel VW golf can easily outperform many an 80s ferrari.
Of course, it's not 1950. The world is far richer and more technologically advanced. Anyone should be able to afford a small home and the basics on a minimum wage job. If that's not possible anymore, then society (and the government) is failing.
Youre aware a living fuck ton of houses are the same 1950s ones that they bought back then, right? Likely with a few decades of miscellaneous updates, but surely not enough to make a 200k house worth the 400-450k they go for on average now.
Basically, a house now costs 8yrs wage, not 4. Many of those houses are the same ones that used to go for 4yrs wage.
You think because someone paid 10k to update the electrical and tossed in 20k for hvac over the decades its just a wash though, eh?
I used to work in the building industry. Removing asbestos, lead pipes, lead paint, replacing the electrics, replacing windows and insulation, etc. isn't going to cost you 10k. It's obviously also not going to cost you half a million. Just saying that the past wasn't all peaches and cream. You're comparing apples with oranges.
But as I said, it's not 1950. We're richer and more technologically advanced. (Safe) housing should be relatively affordable, and it's a choice that it isn't. Example off the top of my head: Vienna, Austria. Beautiful city in a rich country. Government owns over half the housing stock, so rental prices stay relatively affordable. AFAIK it doesn't cost them much, if anything it makes them money. Not that it matters. Like public transport or roads, they don't need to be profitable.
e: also, it's a huge waste that so much capital is stuck in housing for decades, rather than being used to fund other stuff.
It's also worth noting the quality of the items you were receiving. Those washers and dryers never broke, and if they did, they were easily repairable.
You can still buy commercial grade fridges and washing machines for half the price.
Obviously it was idealized, but no one looked at it and thought "this is absolutely ridiculous and unachievable." And definitely race is a factor, since all the families I mentioned were white, and in the 1950s also benefited from the whites only G.I. Bill, but the idea that it was achievable for anyone on a low income as plausible rather than so idealized as to be impossible shows that it wasn't as ridiculous as it is today.
I mean you also had poor families, both white and black, on TV- The Honeymooners and Good Times both come to mind. But even there, they did mostly okay. And Good Times took place in the projects.
Don't forget the Simpsons. Dad, 3 kids, a homemaker spouse, and two pets in a 2 story home with 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, a garage, basement, and a huge yard in a safe neighborhood. All that on a blue collar salary.
Used to seem totally normal but now that I type that all out it sounds insane
It wasn't that normal even then.
Wow what a plot, I've been watching the Simpsons recently so now I'm excited to get to season 8, what a great show
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Like I'm not against living with just ~the bare necessities~ regarding sustenance, but my god have you seen some of these these poor people cans? That ain't meat, bro. Soylent Green are a step up, in that it actually has nutritional value.
The only cheap food I buy is soylent. I buy so little other food comparatively that it's not difficult to afford some nice ingredients to cook a weekend dinner with, or to go out for a treat. I would not wish a life of mcdoubles and canned meat on anyone.
Very similar. I am on two bottles of Soylent a day to lose weight. It is working but I can't wait until I get to normal weight and not have to drink soy juice anymore.
There is something so wrong with everything when I am working at my desk, my 12:00 alarms beeps, I spend two minutes drinking my lunch, and now I can just go back to work. Like what the fuck. My ancestors toiled for a 100,000 years for this?
Do you have a plan for not rebounding? The thing about weight is it's simple, not easy. Simple as in calories in <= calories out. Not easy as in willpower to maintain the net equation. If you get down to a weight and immediately go back to what you were doing, you'll just gain the weight right back. Your lifestyle shift doesn't need to be bottles of goup for 2 meals a day but you do need to find a sustainable way to have <= 400kcal breakfasts and lunches forever.
My solution was to just keep drinking the goup lol
Do you use the powder? How do you typically mix things up?
I did the powder for the first ~3 years when I was starting out. I lost almost all the weight in 1.5 years, and since then have just lowered bodyfat percentage and increased muscle mass, while maintaining weight. These days I'm in a better position financially and can afford the premium of the ready-to-drink bottles so I mostly do that. Unironically I found that "mixing things up" with flavors and additives triggers that hunger within me to consume. I don't mean hunger like caloric, stomach grumble hunger, I mean hunger like an addiction hunger. Keeping it to a single flavor, and a strict schedule helps me turn that part of my brain off and I can now make the mental distinction between "fuel" and "pleasure". When I am out for date night with the wife or have people over for football it's "pleasure". When I'm getting up in the morning for work or eating lunch in-between tickets or sitting down for dinner between work and evening leisure it's "fuel". I consume accordingly, and single-flavor soylent is my "fuel".
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Something something bootstraps
I live with my grandparents. My 80 year old grandmother who never had to work offers me daily career advice. They bought many 3 bedroom brick homes in the late 80's for 15k and now rent them out for close to 1k per month. I love them dearly, but they've contributed to holding back an entire generation from homeownership. They got to enjoy life on easy mode and now wonder why I can't get my shit together. They wonder why I'm not buying a 350k house on a $15 an hour income, or getting married and starting a family.
Because you took everything and won't give it up. Because you used all the easy to reach resources. Because you fucked up pensions and healthcare and education and housing and every other facet of society and now don't care that I'm living in the shitstorm you created. Fucking hell.
Ask them for a house and see what happens.
Someone's getting used bootstraps for Xmas!!!
At least they'll be nice and tight instead of all stretched out. Those grandparents' bootstraps were never pulled.
Please let me know where I can rent a 3-bedroom brick home for 1k per month and sign me up with your grandma's rental business.
They aren't super nice houses or anything. They're just small brick homes, maybe 1,200 Sq ft. They're what used to be considered starter homes, and now they're probably worth around 140k. The problem is there are no job opportunities in a small rural town other than fast food and grocery stores. No young person can afford to buy these old "starter homes" when they make $12-14 an hour. It would be irresponsible even for a 2 income household to finance something like these houses, and they are the cheapest in town.
New developments are going up because the older generations sell off their family land for insane prices. The new houses go for 350k. It's killing small towns because the young people leave. I don't know what the answer is, but I daydream about living simply in small villages and truly having a life vs whatever the fuck this is.
Just as designed. This generation is going to be the most educated in history and that's horrifying to those in power, because between that and the free flow of information on the internet (until the tech industry walls it off) means the same line of bullshit they've perpetuated for over a century won't fool this generation.
Good on you all! Keep educating yourselves, asking questions and when they dismiss you be loud until they have to answer.
In 1960, minimum wage in the US was $1.00/hour and the price of the average house was $11,000.00 That was before Nixon decided to drop millions of tons of bombs on Vietnam and pay for it with paper money. Reagan came along and paid for his tax giveaways by printing even more money. In 1960, $1 million was considered a vast fortune that could buy a dozen luxury homes. Now it's what a rich guy pays for a party.
GOP polices destroyed the middle class.
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Young people could set up conditions to make a lot more money if they would all vote but the rich have convinced people that tax cuts for the wealthy are more important.
if they would all vote
I'm sick of this fucking victim blaming. There's a reason why the DNC doesn't release demographic information for the primary elections. It's because the Boomers are dominating the primaries and enabling the DNC to continue running the same procorporate trash they've always run. If you're going to shame younger people for not voting then in the same sentence you should be calling out Boomers for being selfish pieces of shit and electing the worst possible options and fucking over everybody else.
When the DNC fucked over Bernie I lost all faith.
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We got handed a shit sandwich.
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